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I teach Aikido at a small dojo in Winnipeg, Canada. Been doing so for many years now. This blog is just a collection of ruminations on teaching, descriptions of the events of daily practice, and the occasional funny story.

At the end of class tonight I had my students practice evading shomenuchi from multiple attackers (3 this time). I wanted them to work mainly on evasion and body movement rather than on applying a particular technique. This is pretty straightforward stuff and didn't require having any skill with Aikido techniques, so I let even the new student (first time tonight) have a go at it. He was ducking and dodging as new people do and getting hit quite a lot. At one point, the action passed by where I was sitting in seiza. In an attempt to avoid getting hit, the new guy lunged and ducked sideways so sharply that he completely lost balance and ended up sitting on me! Ha! I saw him coming and got my arms up so that he came to rest on them almost as though he were sitting in a chair. Still sitting on my arms, he looked around at me in surprise and then, abruptly, stood up. We all had a good chuckle. I've been bopped and poked, smacked and wrenched doing Aikido, but I've never had anyone sit on me before!

Since we had a couple of new people in the dojo, I was, once again, teaching katate-tori shihonage. I was thinking about how many times I've actually taught this technique and, roughly estimating, realized that it was over a thousand times. I have to be careful, consequently, not to become robotic about how I teach this technique. I tried to remember what it was like for me when I first tried to do shihonage. Recalling the excitement and fascination I had with it so many years ago really helped to keep me enthused about teaching it once more.

Anywhooo...hopefully next time I blog I'll have something more profound to share -- or not.